


Conjugation

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Folk Horror, Blood and Gore, Dark, Influenced by Midsommar, Multi, Recreational Drug Use, grossness, nonconsensual incest, past Poe/Leia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:01:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24030979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Dr. Leia Organa hears from her estranged son for the first time in years when he invites her to the ceremony making him Supreme Leader of his prairie sect. Her ex and his boyfriend accompany her.Things are not right in New Alderaan.Written for theThree Day Rental Horror Flash Exchange, so please be sure to mind the tags.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9
Collections: Three Day Rental: A Horror Themed Flash Exchange Round 1





	Conjugation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Val_Creative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/gifts).



> G beta'd and cheered and I couldn't have finished this without her. ♥

After they passed through airport security, Poe took Finn to the duty-free plaza. He stopped in front of the legal marijuana store. Done up like an old-time apothecary, its tweeness made Finn itch, especially in the shiny anonymity of the airport.

"Look! I _do_ keep my promises," Poe said stoutly, then added, grinning, "Go on, get whatever you want, sweetie. My treat."

"You're so fucking weird," Finn said and squeezed his hand. Poe shrugged happily.

They browsed and bickered and debated strains and composition long enough that they were late meeting Leia at the car rental windows. A large stack of papers on her lap, she read with her bifocals slipping down her nose and a green pen gripped in her hand.

"Let me guess," she said as she stood and offered her cheek to Poe for a kiss, "distracted by duty-free weed?"

"Got it in one," Poe replied as Finn patted his breast pocket.

"Hello, Finn," she said, smiling. He went to hug her, but she seemed to be offering her hand, so they did an awkward little shuffle of approach-and-retreat.

"You two work that out," Poe said, sounding amused. "I'll get the car."

Outside, it was _hot_. Despite Poe's insistence that it was a "dry heat", he and Finn were both sweating by the time they found the car in the lot. In her long Indian-print dress, however, Leia all but floated beside them. Once they were on the road, Leia in the passenger seat next to Poe, Finn realized he had a headache.

Once he acknowledged the pain, it took over.

"How you doing back there?" Poe asked at one point.

Finn groaned in response.

Finn's headache wasn't a migraine, certainly wasn't strong enough to put him out of commission, but it also wouldn't go away. Something smooth and heavy pounded behind his eyes, crowding their sockets; it also beat against his temples. In the bright, unyielding sunlight, he had to squint to focus enough to see. He lay down across the back seat of the car, one arm over his eyes.

Leia said it was probably TMJ and Poe, naturally, agreed.

Poe had tried not to catastrophize telling Finn about this trip. In the end, they didn't fight — they hardly ever fought, that just wasn't their thing — but the discussion was just about as awkward as Poe had been dreading. It was strange, how he could talk to Finn about anything _except_ Leia-related things. Leia as colleague was fine as a topic, but Leia as friend, mentor, ex — that is, every other facet of Leia for Poe — was rough, ankle-breaking terrain.

He had broken the news when he couldn't find his duffel bag and had to ask Finn for it.

"Why would Leia be taking an emergency trip to Canada?" Finn had asked. The way he precisely echoed Poe's own phrasing was uncomfortable, to say the least.

"Her son invited her." In Poe's mind, after years of closeness with Leia, simply namedropping her estranged son should have answered every possible question. "Ben."

Finn looked down at his hands. "Why can't she go alone?"

"She can! Of course she can. I just don't —"

"What?" Finn asked sharply.

"I don't think she should," Poe admitted as he turned away. "I don't think it's a good idea."

"How is that your call, man?" Finn sounded hoarse, and sincerely curious.

Eventually, Poe said, "It's not. It isn't."

"But?"

Leaning against the wall, Poe scrubbed both hands over his face. "But nothing. I can have feelings about things that aren't my business."

"Of course you can," Finn said, because he was the best person Poe had ever known. "But acting on those feelings?"

Poe kicked his duffel bag. "Look, don't come. It's only a couple days."

His diversion utterly failed. Finn leaned forward, asking, "Why now, do you think?"

"Why now what?"

"Why _now_ is he in touch with Leia?"

Poe sat down heavily beside him, the pair of socks in his hands dropping to the floor. "Apparently he's taking over his weird sect? Like, getting installed as leader. It's a big deal."

"What, like a new pope?" Finn said. It was clear he was hoping that Poe would at least smile.

When Poe did smile, it was a weak and sad attempt. "Yeah, if Rome were in the ass-end of Saskatchewan and the cardinals were old-country die-hards and hippies, sure."

Finn had agreed to come along, which both relieved Poe and further stressed him out. He wanted Finn at his side, that much was true, but he still, eighteen months on, was never entirely sure what Finn and Leia actually made of each other.

While they walked and stretched, before they got back into the car, Finn shotgunned Poe half a hit off the joint. Poe leaned into the kiss, inhaling messily, suddenly unwilling to pull away. He hoped the hit would relax him.

Finn and Leia were chatting amiably now as the car pushed on into the prairie sunlight. They always got along, sometimes exceptionally well, so most of the time Poe doubted his own doubts. If they got along so well, what the hell was he worried about?

"Poe said it was like a pope's investiture," Finn was saying now.

Leia chuckled. "He did, did he?" She twisted in her seat to see Finn better. "No, it's nothing like that. I don't know how his group works — my brother's better with the spiritual questions. Ask him when we get there."

"Aw," Finn said, mock-mournfully. "I was really hoping for purple robes and lots of chanting."

"They fetishize simplicity and openness, alas, not pageantry and splendor," Leia told him. "It's got roots in the old country, pagan and folk Protestant and who knows what else."

"Which old country?" Poe asked now and lowered the visor against the glare of the sun. "Everyone always says 'the old country', I always wondered."

"Sure you did," Leia replied, and the warm affection in her voice was still capable of making Poe grin like a happy kid, ten years on. "One of those old countries that was sometimes Lithuania, sometimes Rus', sometimes Bulgaria or Ukraine or Poland. The old country. From the North Sea to the Black."

"Ah, of course," Finn said, putting on the pompous academic voice he was so good at. "Yes, I know it well. Never been myself, of course." 

Poe was always going to love Leia. He knew that like he knew his own name, or the sound of Finn's breathing in sleep.

If individual human lives were landscapes that piled up behind you as you passed through time, long stretches of pleasant grassland with the occasional steep mountain or harrowing crevasse, Leia's life was a series of craters. Could it even be called a landscape when it was sheer obliteration? Her life had been blown apart more times than Poe could grasp. First, being separated from her twin and birth family; then, her entire adoptive family dying in the Alderaan Hotel bombing; finally, losing her son and then her marriage.

He didn't pity her. Once you loved Leia, hell, once you _met_ her, there was no room for pity, only admiration, respect, and yet more love. It wasn't the sort of love that faded and dwindled after a breakup, either. His love for her was a part of him now, impossible to dislodge, even had he wanted to.

Their phones lost signals a few hours into the drive.

GPS said they were about ten kilometers from their destination, though there was nothing ahead of them but more highway and more green-yellow-blue, when three men in black flagged them down. They stood strung out across the blacktop with hands on their hips. 

"They have guns," Finn said. "Why do they have guns?"

"Everyone has a gun out here," Leia replied. "It's just how things are."

"Uh-huh."

The man in the center, tall and thin as a ginger-haired Ichabod Crane, approached the car as Poe lowered the window. "Leia Organa?"

"I should be so lucky," Poe said but the man didn't respond.

Leia leaned over. "I'm Dr. Organa."

"I'm here to collect you," he said.

"Like a trophy?" Finn asked. Despite the redhead's angry glance, not to mention the handgun on his belt, he didn't regret the joke.

"On behalf New Alderaan's supreme leader," the redhead continued, refocusing his attention on Leia. "The highway ahead and road to our settlement were washed out in the spring. We have a 4x4 for you."

"These gentlemen are accompanying me," Leia said.

Poe checked the rearview mirror to meet Finn's gaze. "Hear that, honey? We're gentlemen."

"Dunno about you," Finn said, massaging the back of his neck, "but that sounds about right for me, yeah."

"They'll need to hike in," the man told Leia. "We have just the one vehicle."

"Who are you, man?" Poe asked.

"Armitage Hux, security chief."

Finn wondered why a latter-day hippie commune needed any security. Or a "supreme leader", come to think of it.

Poe gripped the wheel. "Well, Armitage Hux, security chief, I can't just leave my rental on the side of the highway."

"One of my men will be happy to return it for you."

Finn laughed. "The airport's three hours away!"

"And yet, that's the sort of welcome we're offering you."

Hux took Leia on the 4x4 while the shorter man accepted Poe's keys to the rental car. That left Poe and Finn standing on the edge of the asphalt with a stocky man who said nothing. They watched the car do a U-turn, then speed off back the way they'd come. When it was out of sight, their security officer snorted, then turned sharply and walked off into the underbrush.

They followed him. After about five hundred yards, they came to a makeshift path, two 2x4 planks laid side by side over mud.

"Careful," he told them. It was the extent of his conversation for the next two hours.

It was so bright, everywhere vivid yellow, and flat. The horizon might as well have been inked in with a straight-edge. The fields were yellow, so yellow, neither egg yolk nor gold, just pure waxy bright _yellow_. Crayon yellow. Child's yellow.

Finn kept his camera at his eye. That helped, a little.

*

He was taller than she'd remembered. Maybe she was smaller. 

After Ben hugged her and took her bag, Leia didn't know what to do with her hands. He was talking, quickly, the words chasing each other manically, about the "Conjugation" tomorrow and his growth in stature and authority and how much he needed her to _see_ what he'd accomplished.

"I see, I see already," she told him.

When he swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbed sharply in his throat, just as it had when he hit puberty. He still seemed to her appraising eye somewhat unfinished, jagged Adam's apple and over-large hands and a sort of hunched tension in his broad shoulders.

"Ben," Leia asked, "where's your father?"

As he looked around, sharp locks of hair blew across his face like calligraphic strokes. "He's around here somewhere. I'm sure he'll be back for dinner."

"And Luke?"

Ben's lips thinned yet further. "I haven't seen my uncle in years."

"No, sweetie," she said gently. "He's coming, too. He's on his way. I thought he must have already made it here."

"Alone?"

"I think he's bringing a student, actually."

"Of course he is. Everyone's got their _students_ in tow." He hadn't taken well to the news that Leia had brought guests; she hadn't expected him to. He turned away as he said it, then threw back over his shoulder as he strode away, "Make yourselves at home. I've got some details to see to."

*

What Finn knew about Leia's kid had never sounded promising. Mood disorders, arsons, kicked out of two different schools for peeping on girls, unable to stay at home or with his uncle. Finn hadn't once thought he'd ever meet the guy, and he was more than content with that.

But now he'd met Ben Organa-Solo in the hulking flesh. Somehow Finn was even more unsettled than he'd expected to be. He was unable to put his finger on just what was off about Ben, except _everything_.

"Everything, really?" Poe asked when Finn got him alone. They were on a narrow path between a barn and what looked like the world's largest mud puddle.

"You didn't think he was creepy?"

"Of course I did," Poe said, "but —"

"So?"

Poe shrugged. "I just want to try to give him a chance, I guess?"

Finn groaned. "Seriously?"

Poe's mouth twitched as he looked across the mud and into the brilliant yellow fields. He sucked in one cheek as he thought, before he said, "I guess I feel like I should try."

"That's a lot different from wanting to."

"I know." Poe gave him a sheepish smile. "I'm trying to be a better person."

"First, you're already a good person," Finn said, "and, second, could you save the self-improvement for when we get home?"

"When you put it like that —" Poe slipped his arm through Finn's and squeezed his hand. "— of course."

When they turned the corner around the barn, heading back to the main house, a noise came from the mud behind them. Finn glanced over his shoulder but saw nothing. He could have sworn, however, that he'd heard a man's voice.

"What?" Poe paused.

"Nothing," Finn said and looked back again. Wet mud, yellow crops, blue sky. No noise but the breeze and a far-off tractor. "Nothing, I guess."

They wandered into main house looking for something to drink. In the kitchen, Poe ran the water good and cold while Finn rooted around in the cupboards for cups.

An older woman backed into the kitchen, her arms full of laundry. When she turned and saw them, she dropped the whole pile.

Finn scrambled over to help her pick them up.

"I'm sorry," Poe said when the woman froze in place. "Ben said to make ourselves —"

"Who?"

"Ben."

"Who's Ben?"

Poe's eyes widened for a moment. He held his hand over his head. "Tall guy, dark hair, real bossy?"

"You mean Kylo," she replied. "Kylo Ren. I don't know any Ben."

When they were alone again and could discuss the name change, Finn laughed so loudly Poe suddenly feared they would get in trouble.

"What, like Sophia Loren's unsuccessful cousin? Kai Loren?"

"Maybe it's Irish?" Poe replied. "Kyle O'Ren."

Finn started to sober up, but it took awhile. Not that Poe minded; it was good to see Finn laughing. Even if it did make Poe feel obscurely nervous and paranoid.

Then again, "obscurely nervous and paranoid" was how they were all feeling here.

"Is it a name?" Finn asked. "Or a title?"

"Hell if I know." Poe slumped to lean against Finn's shoulder. "Hey, how's your headache?"

"Awful," Finn said.

*

"Wait a second," Poe said when they made their way to the lunch tables. Hux and his men stood apart from several people who seemed to be regular community members, dressed in faded workclothes. "Where'd our bags go?"

They'd left them on the porch when they arrived.

"In the dormitory," a gangly kid said and pointed to another long, single-story building, indistinguishable from the others. "We sleep in the dormitory there."

"All together?" Finn asked.

He nodded. "We are family. We have nothing to hide from each other."

"Nothing to hide? But —" Poe shook his head. "Okay, cool."

"Shame and privacy are the harbingers of deceit." He sounded like he was reciting the saying. The women behind him nodded.

Finn peered through the window. Inside, the dormitory was a single room with two rows of twin beds. "You want us to sleep in here with you?"

"You are welcome," a short woman replied. He smiled nervously back at her.

"It'll be fine," Poe said quietly. "It's just a couple nights, right?"

"I would have thought you'd be accustomed to sleeping in groups," Hux said.

"Yeah?" Finn turned. "Why is that?"

"Your background in foster care suggests that you probably spent some time in juvenile facilities," Hux said, as dispassionately as he might have described the color of the sky.

"How the fuck —" Finn bit off the question when he saw Leia approaching and Poe hurrying over to meet her. The surge of hot, confused anger, however, did not subside.

Over lunch, they learned that Leia would be sleeping in the farmhouse. She described her room, the view it gave over the yellow fields, with a broad smile as she served herself a second helping of bean salad. They were seated at a long table, plainly built, set out on the grass with low benches for seating, low enough that Finn and Poe's knees were higher than their hips. Two more tables were perpendicular to theirs and crowded with community members.

"More lemonade, Mommy?" Kylo asked, lifting the pitcher.

"Please," she replied and held out her glass.

"How come you get your own room?" Finn asked. He knew how rude it sounded, but he couldn't help it. He really was not looking forward to spending two nights in that people-silo.

Kylo poured his mother's lemonade, then said, "There are guest rooms available."

"Since when?" Finn asked. Under the table, Poe poked him in the thigh but Finn ignored it. "There are?"

"Yes," Kylo said. "We want our guests to feel at home. Even the unexpected ones."

"He's really not letting that go, is he?" Finn murmured and Poe patted his hand under the table.

"Ben!" Leia said sharply. "Don't be —"

He stood suddenly and threw down his fork. "No! You don't get to tell me what to do, you don't —" From their low benches, the rest had to crane to see his face; he loomed over the table, silhouetted against the endless sky, his expression little more than a caricatured snarl.

"Perhaps we need dessert?" Hux put in.

Kylo stared at him for a long moment, then picked up his plate and hurled it at the ground before he stomped away.

"Yes," Hux said. "Dessert would not go amiss."

Leia kept her hand over her mouth as she watched Kylo's departure. Well after he'd disappeared, she continued to watch. She shrugged off Poe's quiet entreaty and her hand remained where it was.

"Just a lot to process," she told him without turning. 

*

After lunch, Finn lingered around the tables, helping with clean-up. When he looked around for Poe, he was nowhere to be seen.

A young woman named Jannah showed Finn around the compound. She was friendly but no-nonsense; the tour would have to be pretty quick, she said, since she had a lot to do.

"I can look around by myself," Finn said. "You don't have to —"

"Don't be silly." She brushed off her hands as she straightened up from emptying a sack of feed into a wheelbarrow. She took a wrong step, stumbling slightly, and Finn grabbed her hand to steady her. She went still, just for a moment, eyes locked on his, before recovering herself and stepping back. "Thank you."

"Welcome. You really don't have to stop what you're doing."

"What kind of host would I be, then?" she asked as they set off. "So this is the swine house and pen, fairly self-explanatory. We've got Red Wattles, Large Whites, and some Orbaks. We're experimenting with some extensive farming approaches and the Orbaks should be good for that."

Finn wanted to make a joke about _Large Whites_ , but he didn't have a chance before she hopped onto the fence and whistled. A massive pig, bristly-hairy like a boar, waddled over. Unlike the others, it sported small tusks.

"This is Ansett," she said and scratched his broad forehead. "He's the foundation of the Orbak program."

"Should've named him Jerry," Finn joked now. "Jerry Orbak?" 

She merely gazed at him blankly. No one around here had a sense of humor. It sucked.

"Over there's the spring house," she told him, pointing to the right as she jumped down and moved away from the pigs. "Behind the sheep."

He'd taken that small structure for an outhouse.

"A house for a whole season? Generous!" Finn joked, but she didn't smile. He shrugged. "I guess that's where there's water."

"Yes," she said gravely. "Next to it is the temple."

There was nothing next to the spring house. Finn's headache pounded. "Where?"

Jannah stopped about ten feet from the spring house. In the grass, a spiral of thick rope described a circle; in the circle's center, there was a rickety table of plywood balanced on two saw horses. A rusty cook's knife and dirty mixing bowl sat atop the plywood.

"The _temple_ ," she said. It sounded like she was insisting on something.

"Open to God and everyone, huh?" Finn tried to smile, but his head hurt and his eyes felt dry and swollen.

"We have nothing to hide."

"Of course not," he replied. "So this is where the ceremony will be?" When she didn't respond, he added, "The investiture? Making Kylo the Supreme Leader?"

She nodded. "That happened here. Tomorrow is the conjugation."

So many overwrought terms, Finn thought, as he followed her toward the small goat enclosure.

"He's very powerful," she said. "Only growing more so."

"That's great," Finn replied. "That's just great."

*

Leia was exhausted, her mind fuzzy and limbs heavy. This was much more than travel tiredness. She'd told Poe and Finn the truth: No doubt the emotional stress of seeing Ben again was taking its toll.

She lay down on the wide, sagging bed and let the breeze from the open window cool her. It toyed with her hair and tickled her face. The quilt beneath her was well-laundered and faded, but all the softer for that. She traced the patchwork's angles and intersections for a while, remembering the view of fields from the plane, thinking about fractals repeating their patterns down to the microscopic scale. Eventually, she thought she dozed off.

When she drifted awake, Ben lay curled on his side, his head in her lap. She stroked his silky hair back off his face. Light blew rapidly through the room, alternately blinding and dull. Sometimes her hand looked normal; the next moment, it appeared much younger, more tan, smoother. He rolled over, burying his face in her lap and wrapping his arms around her waist. She could no longer see his features, only feel his hair. Perhaps this was Han. It had to be Han; he murmured low in his throat and tightened his hold as he burrowed his face against her crotch.

"What are you...?" she asked thickly. Only her hand seemed capable of movement.

"Let me," the man said. "You never let me have _anything_."

"That's not true," she replied, automatically. Maybe it was true. Maybe she was at fault.

Still petting his hair, feeling warmer than ever, Leia reclined and spread her legs encouragingly. Above her, the ceiling of rough plaster pulsed and shuddered. She'd missed this, missed being touched, _seen_ , adored. She'd missed a mouth on her mound, lips around her clit, tongue swirling lower to nudge at her hole. Han, like Poe, later, had always had a real knack for this. He brought her trembling and shivering to a peak, then eased back, then took her higher, until the pleasure snapped and spilled, filling her skin.

Afterward, he held her from behind, face buried in her shoulder. He fucked her thighs and suckled on her ear, her neck, his hand possessively clamped over one breast. 

"You're so wet, Mommy," he said. "You just love this."

With a strangled groan, he eventually ejaculated. He lay there, quaking and panting, for a long while. Leia was leaden. She could neither move nor think; all she could do was watch the bright shadows skim across one whitewashed wall.

Her sinuses burned and her eyes stung. She was crying before he'd left the bed and settled the quilt over her like a shroud. Maybe she had been crying the entire time. She was asleep, that was all, and this must be a very bad exhaustion dream.

Poe stepped off the top stair just as Kylo strode down the hall. He'd come out of a washroom and was drying his hands on his thighs.

"She's napping," Kylo said, but Poe checked on her anyway.

Leia lay curved on her side, facing away from the door, a pretty quilt over her. Quietly, so as not to disturb her, Poe pulled the door shut and tiptoed back the way he came.

*

After learning more than he ever needed to know about extensive vs. intensive cultivation methods, hog feed, and acid-levels of canola seeds, Finn tracked Poe down to the room they'd hastily been assigned. Their bags were on the bed and he wondered if he should check them and make sure everything was still there.

He was being ridiculous, he knew that. But his head hurt and this place was strange and Poe seemed determined not to acknowledge anything.

"Why can't you just say —" Finn stopped and sagged. "I don't know. Anything."

"You didn't have to come," Poe said. "No one made you."

"No, of course not. I wanted to come." He thought about taking Poe's hand but, for the moment, that gesture seemed both enormously significant and highly difficult to accomplish.

"Yeah, exactly, so I —" Poe didn't finish the sentence.

"You what?"

"What?"

Finn curled his fingers against his palms. "You were going to say you didn't want me to come."

"That's not true."

"Maybe not then. Feels like it is now." Finn pushed the point, unsure what he was doing, but Poe seemed to be in the mood for arguing, so why not let him have it?

Instead, Poe flopped back onto the bed. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and small. "Why are we fighting? We hardly ever fight."

Finn's irritation and the constant, thudding weight of his headache got the better of him. "I don't know, Poe! Maybe because we're stuck in sunny hell with no way out and fucking weirdo cultists circling? Could that be it?"

"We can leave," Poe told the ceiling.

"Can we? I don't think we can! Road's gone and we don't have a car!"

Poe sat up, frowning with determination. "I'll talk to Leia, we —"

He always wanted people to be happy: usually, that trait was one of the things Finn loved most about the man. "You talk to her, we'll probably just end up moving here."

"The fuck's that mean?"

Finn shrugged. He wasn't angry so much as worked up, finding a zone of meanness and pettiness that drowned out his headache and his weariness and, most of all, his worries. "Did you see her at lunch? Happy as a clam. She wants to be here. She wants you here. None of this was an accident."

Poe gaped at him. "That's ridiculous. That's — what are you even —? You're stressed, I get that, but don't —"

Finn was on his feet now. He had to move, but he also couldn't be so close to Poe and how he flinched each time Finn spoke. "Don't what? Malign your one great love and legendary mentor? I'm sorry, maybe it's just an ACCIDENT her fucking creepy kid is in charge here. Maybe it's just an ACCIDENT that she asked for you to come here. It's all just an accident!"

"Finn."

Finn turned on his heel and just barely stopped himself from knocking the old-fashioned bureau hard enough to make it shudder. "What?"

Poe's mouth worked for a moment, empty. "You're —"

Finn did shove the bureau now; it wasn't as satisfying to hear its mirror knock against the wall as he'd thought. "I'm being irrational, sure. Just need a nap. Like some kind of baby."

"Finn."

He was tired now. He leaned against the bureau as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "What?"

"She's not —. Leia isn't —"

When he spoke now, Finn sounded drained. "She might not be behind all this, but she sure as hell is somewhat responsible."

"That's not what I was going to say."

"No? Then what?"

Poe stood up. The bed creaked as he moved. "Never mind. It's not important now."

 _She's not my one great love,_ he'd wanted to say. It was so obvious. It was as clear as his own (prominent) nose. Finn. It was always Finn.

Poe believed that, believed it with his whole heart, but if Finn didn't, what was the point?

*

Leia nearly slept through dinner. When Ben came to get her, he brushed out her hair and rebraided it, looping the plaits around her head. She'd worn her hair like that often when he was young. She was doing fieldwork for her dissertation then and it was the most convenient style. 

"Pretty," he said, standing behind her to show her the results in the mirror over the bureau. His hands were huge on her shoulders. "Prettiest mommy. Best."

She touched one of his hands with her own, far smaller one. "Couldn't do it without you," she joked. "What's the saying? Without you I'm nothing."

Ben did not smile, however, or acknowledge the joke at all. "Wear the dress I gave you."

It was dark, and heavy, made of twill or oilcloth or something, nothing like her style, but Leia nodded. "Of course."

As she dressed, fingers fumbling with the zippers, she tried to shake off the persistent dull heaviness that seemed to be overwhelming her. She drank down the lemonade Ben had brought her. The glass was cool, covered in condensation, and the drink itself refreshingly cold and tangy. Yet she still felt leaden.

At dinner, she sat with Poe on one side, Ben on the other. She didn't see Finn. 

The sky was as bright as ever. 

"No sign of Luke?" she asked at one point.

"Not a peep," Ben replied. His scowl suggested that she not press the issue.

For possibly the first time in her life, she complied.

*

Finn ate a hasty dinner in the kitchen. While everyone dined at the tables outside, he left the house and circled back around the compound. He wasn't sure what he was looking for — a car with keys in the ignition, a working phone line, maybe cable news — but he needed to keep moving. He needed to feel as if he were doing something. 

He passed the so-called temple from the opposite side. This time, he noticed the dark, trampled grass beneath the sawhorses. Someone had spilled a lot of paint there. He wished he had his camera with him, but he hadn't seen it since lunch.

When he moved behind the spring house, something banged against its walls from within. The thudding precisely matched that of his headache. Startled, something lurching in his throat, Finn eased the door open and peered into the dark interior.

Nothing there. It smelled like algae, however, like wet rocks and fresh mud. _Tangy_ , he thought.

There wasn't any room for someone to be in here, as it turned out. The spring house was barely wider than the well it covered.

Finn closed the door and moved on. If something splashed and beat a fist against rock, he didn't hear it. The noise joined the rest of the pain in his head.

He walked the entire perimeter of the compound. Not everyone was at dinner, but those he did pass didn't seem surprised or upset to see him.

"Looking for my camera," he told them. "Seen it?"

Just one small outbuilding, windowless, had a lock on its door. The door, however, was ajar, so Finn looked inside. There was the single ATV that Hux had appeared with, as well as a pick-up truck.

There were no keys in either vehicle's ignition, unfortunately. There was also, he learned when he checked, hoping to hot-wire it, no engine in the truck. This was a Potemkin garage.

He considered, then rejected, the idea of hot-wiring a thresher or a tractor. First of all, they moved incredibly slowly. Secondly, he had no idea how to hot wire anything. Poe claimed to be able to, but Finn didn't know if he was telling the truth, nor whether Poe would agree to come along on a harebrained escape attempt.

Outside, Finn slid down the wall to sit in the dirt. His head throbbed. He missed Poe. He missed Poe suddenly, and bodily, and regret spilled through him like ink into water. What was he doing, sneaking around and looking to "escape"? He needed Poe. He needed his boyfriend.

He knew that Poe suspected he was jealous of Leia. He really wasn't. Whatever he felt about Leia was far more complicated than that.

He liked Leia, very much. Sometimes, especially recently, he loved her. She was both brilliant and warm, and though he'd left academia, he deeply respected her accomplishments. If they'd met any other way, he expected that they would have become fast friends. If anything, she reminded him of himself, how she kept her own counsel without coming off as aloof or cold. 

One late night, when she'd come for dinner and they'd all had too much wine, he was making up the couch for her. One of Poe's cheesy space-age bachelor-pad jazz mixes was still playing on the stereo and Leia danced vaguely to it while Finn smoothed down the sheets and unfolded a blanket.

"Did I ever tell you about my son?" she asked and held out her hand.

Shaking his head, Finn took her hand and they swayed together. They weren't dancing, not quite. They were moving around the memory of dancing.

"He was always different," she continued. "Beautiful, very bright, and _different_."

The night's wine pulsed through Finn's body and slowed his thoughts. Leia's perfume was lovely in his nose.

She kept talking and he was listening, he really was, but it was the rhythm of her voice rather than content of her words that he heard. Until the music ended, and she was saying, "...he'd make things move. Little things, his action figures, my pens and papers."

"Every kid does that, though," Finn said. By five or six, he had gotten very good at entertaining his foster siblings by making the Mrs. Butterworth bottle of syrup dance and gesture.

Leia tipped back her head and looked him over. "If you say so."

In the doorway, Poe appeared, shirt wet from the sink, towel over his shoulder like a waiter. "Now this is something I love to see."

He approached them, and they parted, and Poe led Leia over to the couch. 

Finn still swayed on his feet. Watching them felt like an intrusion, even if he was the one Poe took to bed, even if this was his home and she was the visitor.

He wasn't jealous. He was, if anything, lost. He didn't know, and still did not, where he _was_ for Poe.

He'd never find out, however, if he ran away.

Twilight was finally starting to creep into being. The edges of buildings and objects were darker; the sky had lost a few orders of brilliance. Poe was tossing a ball with some of the kids when Finn returned to the dinner area. When he saw Finn, Poe's brows leapt up in surprised pleasure, but then he composed himself.

Finn hated seeing Poe shut himself down. He smiled as he approached and took Poe's hand to lead him back to the house.

"I'm sorry," Poe murmured as they climbed the stairs two at a time. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't —"

"Poe?"

"Yeah?"

They were in the hallway, and now their room. Finn wrapped his arms around Poe's waist and kissed him before saying, "Shut up."

Tilting his head, Poe grinned at that. Just for a second, nothing like the nearly-permanent grin he often wore back home, but it was better, sharper, for its briefness. The expression was a memory, flitting over Poe's face, and Finn clung to it. He backed up onto the bed, still kissing Poe, pulling him down until Poe was settled atop the full length of Finn's body.

They lost themselves in the kiss, nipping at each other, murmuring low in their throats, shifting around. Finn could have gone on for hours; in the past, he _had_ , and so had Poe.

What he missed, now that they were here, he was starting to realize, was time, and the options, the _autonomy_ , it provided.

He had his hand up under Poe's shirt, pushing the hem higher before sweeping down to push gently under Poe's waistband. Poe grunted happily and kissed him more deeply. They were breathing heavily now, starting to sweat, and arousal crowded at Finn's consciousness, burning up at the edges.

That was when the screaming started.

Several people were approaching the source of the scream. As Poe and Finn joined them, the knot of people became a crowd. No one, however, spoke.

The woman screaming was young and lanky. It was Jannah, Finn's tour guide from earlier. She stood just outside the pig pen, pointing into it. Her scream did not end but rose and fell like a siren.

One of Hux's flunkies tried to move her away, but she was rooted in place. When he slapped her, Poe moved forward, protesting, but Finn caught the hem of his shirt and tugged him back.

Jannah went on screaming even as another flunkie approached her from behind and, together, the two men swung her over the first man's shoulders. They hurried away. Her hoarse, terrified cry diminished but, even after she was gone, it continued to ring and echo.

"What is it now?" Hux asked irritably as he made his way through the crowd.

"Nothing," Kylo said. It wasn't clear where he'd come from, but he spoke now from the far side of the pen. "Jannah's always been high-strung. One of the hogs probably frightened her."

"Interesting hypothesis." Hux peered into the enclosure. "So what's that, then?"

"What's what?" Poe hurried up to Hux's side. Wanting to cover his face with his hands, Finn watched him go. "Oh, _fuck_ that's —"

He sounded like he was choking. 

"Indeed," Hux said.

Finn pushed through the small crowd to get to Poe's side. "What's —"

A few feet from the edge of the pen, stuck in the mud like a surveyor's flag, was a human arm clad in what looked like plaid flannel. Its hand dangled from the bloody broken wrist, attached only by a slip of skin. A large pig snuffled at it, its snout twitching, before another pushed it aside to claim the hand for itself. They snarled at each other, small feet slipping in the mud, before knocking the arm down and setting to chew on it, one at the hand, the other at the bloody shoulder joint. A finger popped free and disappeared, crunching, into the hog's mouth. It was the Orbak, Finn realized, recognizing it by the tusks. It raised its head and looked at him, or seemed to, blood coating its snout.

"Shouldn't we get it out of there?" Poe sounded like he was five years old, hoping against hope he'd be told 'no'.

"Can't help him now," Hux replied curtly.

"But —"

"Hogs will eat anything," Kylo said. He sounded, if anything, proud as well as impressed.

Everyone else was silent. They did not disperse, but nor were they reacting at all.

Another pig, this one splattered with gray blotches, her swollen teats swinging and dragging in the mud, nosed a football through the mud. Finn wondered whether it was the same ball Poe had been tossing with the kids when he realized it was a head. Too coated with mud to make out any features, but definitely a human head.

His balance seesawing madly, Finn pulled Poe away, toward the open air, and held his hand as he crumpled to his knees to vomit. He leaned heavily against Poe's leg, forehead pressed to the back of Poe's hand, waiting for the world to stop heaving and dropping.

Later, as they huddled together in the guest room, they attempted to piece together what they had seen and what they knew. It looked like a man's hand, large and square. It might have worn a wedding ring. The plaid of the shirt seemed vivid, not at all like the washed-out colors of the clothes worn here. The head had short-ish hair? Not long. Shaggy, it had looked, clotted with mud as it was, _shaggy_.

"We're leaving in the morning," Poe swore. 

Finn wanted to believe him. He wanted, more than that, for Poe to believe it.

"Just need to talk to Leia."

They undressed and climbed into bed. Somehow, Finn fell asleep quickly, but Poe could not.

After an hour or more, Poe got up. He dressed quickly in the dark, then paused, hand on the door. Finn slept deeply, one arm curled where it had been draped over Poe. The space Poe had occupied collapsed.

Patting his pockets, Poe made his way out of the room and down the hall. The house was dark, but the floorboards creaked no matter how quietly he tried to move. Maybe they were louder the more careful he tried to be. He tapped on Leia's door and stuck his head in, but her room was empty. When he stepped inside, he realized the room was untouched; the bed was neatly made and there was no sign of Leia's things, not even her bag. Dust motes hung suspended in the moonlight cutting through the window.

In the corner of his eye, as he turned, a dark-haired figure moved away down the hall. Poe turned, about to greet Leia, only to see the figure disappear down the stairs. It wasn't Leia — it was a woman, if height and length of hair were anything to go on, but one taller than Leia with much wavier hair loose down her back.

Poe moved more quickly now as he hurried after the woman. She made very little sound as she moved but he winced at each creak and protest from the floors. Down the stairs and he stopped, stumbling, at the landing.

The front room was empty.

He stepped forward. Something flickered darkly to his left. He whirled, but nothing was there. He moved down the back hall nonetheless, headed for the kitchen. There was nothing in the kitchen but appliances shining dully in the dark and a drip of water from the tap.

On the porch, the night air surprised him with how cool it was, almost chilly. He paced the length of the porch, several times, arms crossed and palms chafing warmth back into his biceps. His pulse raced, made him dizzy, and thundered in his ears.

He was alone out here. It was quiet enough that he could have been alone in the world, just him and the bugs singing in the fields. And the breeze when it murmured its way through.

He sat on the porch steps for a long time, toes curled against the chill, and smoked the rest of the joint Finn had rolled in the car. That trip felt like years ago already, another life.

 _Poe,_ a woman breathed. _Baby, you shouldn't be here._

He was well and truly stoned, finally relaxing, so when he turned his head and saw his mother sitting next to him, Poe just smiled. "But I am here."

 _Leave,_ she told him, and touched his cheek, then his hair. He'd gotten her hair, messy and tangled and rioting with curls. _You're not safe._

"I can't leave without Finn."

 _Of course not._ She nodded, eyes closed and lips pursed. He could see through her in patches. She was threadbare. Coming apart.

"I miss you, Mama," he said. "I miss you so much."

She started to crumple, tears pushing down her face like raindrops. _Leave, please._

When he moved to hug her, to hold her and hold her here, his arms flailed and he fell forward, alone.

*

Every woman Finn saw the next morning had their hair in braids coiled at the sides of their heads. At first he assumed it must be a coincidence; then he began to consider whether weirdo communal cultists might be just as subject to influence and fashion trends as anyone else.

"This is creepy, right?" he asked Poe as quietly as he could when Poe arrived.

"I agreed with you!" Poe replied and slid onto the bench. "What do you want from me?"

"No, new creepiness. The hair, Poe."

Poe looked around, not bothering to hide his curiosity. Then he turned back to Finn and leaned close to say, "Mucho creepy. What the fuck?"

"No clue," Finn said. "Did you find Leia?"

Poe shook his head.

"Everything all right?" Hux appeared on the other side of the table. "How did you boys sleep?"

Finn swallowed the automatic hackle-raise that being called _boy_ always provoked. "Great!" he said loudly. "How about you, Poe? Sleep well?"

"Like a baby," Poe said and lifted his mug of tea as if to toast Hux. "A teething, fussy baby who saw a man's arm and skull being devoured by angry pigs, but a baby all the same."

Hux's eyes narrowed and his cheeks briefly hollowed. "Excellent," he said after a moment. "Just excellent."

"Have you seen Dr. Organa?" Finn asked as casually as possible.

Hux cocked an eyebrow. "I assume she's preparing for the ceremony."

"What's she need to do?" Finn asked, dropping all pretense. "Isn't it Kylo's thing?"

Clucking his tongue, Hux shook his head and moved off. "Don't fret, boys. You'll see."

They watched him go. Neither had any appetite for breakfast.

"This is the temple?" Poe asked when the crowd arrived at the spiral of rope.

"I told you," Finn said under his breath.

"No seats?"

"Is that really what you're concerned about?"

Poe shrugged. "Yes and no. I don't know. Give me a break."

They copied what the others were doing, filing around in a circle, guided by the rope. When they came to a stop, each community member stepped into loops of rope and lifted a second, matching rope to slip over their wrists.

"Hell no am I hog-tying myself," Finn said and took a step backwards. The line of congregants pressed him back into place. "Nope."

"Finn," Poe said quietly.

Finn knew what he'd say if he had the anger, the energy, he'd felt yesterday. Today, however, all he had was the memory of those things, and a headache that was growing worse.

"Gentlemen," Hux said from behind them. He gripped them by the shoulders. "Is there a problem?"

"No!" Poe shook his head. "Just haven't done this whole...rope pew thing before! I'm such a klutz, worried I'll tangle you all up and drag you back to Chicago, you know? Kidnapped by spiritual practice, who'd believe me?"

He was babbling and Finn ached for him. 

"Let me help," Hux said, neatly tying them, ankles first, then hands. He patted their waists and tested the rope. His hand lingered for a moment near Finn's pocket. Wildly, Finn wondered if he were actually copping a feel, but then Hux stepped back. "Looks good to me. Thank me later."

There was no music, just the drone of insects and wind through the crops. There was nothing to indicate that the ceremony had begun except the sudden sharpening of the crowd's focus.

In matching white gowns, simple as feedsacks, Kylo and Leia entered the temple boundary. Leia's hair was done like all the other women's, Finn noticed, then cursed himself for getting distracted by extraneous detail. Her face was slack and she moved like she was being steered.

"I'm trying to get my hands free," Poe whispered to him while keeping his gaze on the altar.

"Stop squirming," Finn hissed back. If they interrupted this — whatever _this_ was — he was certain there would be hell to pay.

"I could break my thumb —" Poe said.

"Don't!" Finn told him, as quietly as possible, but the congregants around them looked over.

At the makeshift altar, Kylo raised the rusty knife. He spoke in a language Finn didn't know — Lithuanian? Bulgarian? Old country? — and the congregation answered him as one.

They all knelt, and the rope that bound them all tugged Finn and Poe to their knees, too.

 _Stop this_ , Finn thought, staring at Leia. She looked like a bad xerox of herself. Her body was present, but _she_ was very far away. He kept looking at her, refusing to blink. _You can stop this. Stop him._

"Think about her," he whispered to Poe. "Talk to her in your mind."

Poe turned to look at him, mouth open. "What?"

"Just fucking do it," Finn said.

 _Leia_ , he thought. _Come back._

The knife slipped in Kylo's hand and clattered against the bowl. Kylo tried to grab it, but the blade sliced open his palm. The crowd murmured.

He held up his hand. The cut was deep, the blood pumping out. Under the prairie sun, the blood was nearly black as it coursed down his arm.

"Power," he said, "is like blood." He turned to Leia and took her hand with his cut one. "Our blood is one."

 _Stop him,_ Finn repeated, over and over. His headache pounded, shoving back against his thoughts, making him dizzy. _Don't let him do this._

Kylo brought their hands to Leia's mouth, then bent to kiss them, too. She stared out over the crowd blankly as blood spilled down her throat and soaked into her dress. Kylo wielded the knife with his other hand now.

_You can stop him._

"No!" Poe screamed when Kylo brought the knife to Leia's neck. He threw himself forward and crashed into the row of worshipers in front of him. Finn tried to haul him back, with teeth and urgent words. "Let her go, you sick fuck!"

Kylo turned to regard them. He looked faintly surprised, as if he didn't know he still had an audience.

"Mother become wife," he said, dropping their hands and sweeping the knife out to his other side. "Wife become mother. Blood to blood."

In the agony beating against his skull, Finn's vision went monochrome. He saw white gowns and black blood, Leia sagging, a willowy young woman being pulled off her knees to her feet by her hair. Her braided hair. Kylo pushed the woman toward Leia like they were cups in a sidewalk find-the-pea scam.

"My blood," Kylo said, "my power."

 _Stop this!_ Finn screamed through the pain. Beside him, Poe thrashed, trying to get free.

At the altar, both women were coated in great arcs of blood. Kylo stood behind them, taller, looming like a puppeteer.

Leia blinked at the younger woman, who nodded. They turned as one on Kylo, knocking him out of sight.

The crowd murmured prayers and imprecations. Finn got one hand free and reached for Poe.

He didn't know what was about to rise from behind the altar, but he didn't want to stick around to find out, either.


End file.
